Skip to main content
Main

To Bake Turbot, Holibut, Salmon, or White and Fresh-water Fish

A method for baking whole fish such as turbot, holibut, salmon, or other white fish with herbs, spices, salt, vinegar, stock, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Bake Turbot, Holibut, Salmon, or White and Fresh-water Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cover an earthen pan with sweet herbs, spices, salt, and vinegar or stock.

  3. Gut the fish and wash it well.

  4. Stuff the fish with a cooked filling or return the roe to prevent overcooking.

  5. Cut the fish down the back into the bone and tie up the head.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in the pan and pack any small fish around it.

  2. Smooth the top of the fish and cover it completely with butter.

  3. Bake in the oven until the fish yields to the touch.

  4. Remove excess butter before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-mentha-1,3,8-triene (camphor, herbal).

  3. Thyme + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  4. Thyme + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Dill + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture as its proteins set.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the surface of the fish from drying in the oven.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and the pan liquid.

The step that matters

Bake until the fish yields to the touch. Fish protein sets quickly with heat, so overbaking turns it dry and firm. Check for gentle give at the thickest part and remove it as soon as it flakes.

Swap the dill

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, thyme, vinegar, wine, butter):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Dillthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, thyme, vinegar, wine, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More baked fish recipes

with Tomatoes 7with Breadcrumbs 6Stuffed 6in Batter 4with Pork Slices 4Sauce for 4 See all 221 →

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes